Workshop on Free and Open Source Software for Organizations
Date: 19-09-2008 Friday
Time: 4:30 to 6:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Hall, Architecture Department, BVBCET, Hubli
Preamble
The workshop was aimed at increasing awareness about Free and Open Source Software amongst government, non-government and small and medium business organizations. The primary objective was to explain what FOSS is and the various available FOSS that could help in their individual organizations. It was also planned to demonstrate a few FOSS.
Who Attended
The workshop was attended by 30 people from 15 organizations. The break up of the organizations was, 1 was government organization, 4 non-government organizations, 1 educational institution and 9 small and medium businesses/industries.
Resource Persons
The workshop was conducted by Dr. Satish Annigeri, Professor, B.V.B. College of Engg. & Tech., Hubli, Mr. Parshwanath Saligrama, Business Manager, IBM India and Mr. Sachin Kinagi, Executive Briefing Consultant, IBM India.
Contents of the Workshop
In the first part of the Workshop, Dr. Satish Annigeri talked about definitions of FOSS, their advantages, relevance to organizations, some successful FOSS projects, example software that are useful to organizations and demonstrated a few FOSS such as TinyERP and SugarCRM. It was announced that student teams from BVBCET would extend assistance to organizations in implementing FOSS based solutions in the form of installation, configuration and training to staff.
Mr. Parshwanath talked about FOSS initiatives from IBM and the IBM philosophy of providing solutions to customers and thw way FOSS and open technologies fit well into meeting that objective.
Mr. Sachin Kinagi talked about virtualization technologies and the emerging trends and related tools and technologies. He also demonstrated the concepts through a live demo.
The workshop was followed by an informal interaction amongst participants and resource persons.
Outcomes of the Workshop
As a follow up to the workshop, there are two proposals under consideration where solutions will be proposed for the requirements defined by an NGO and a hospital. Student teams are being formed and schedules being finalized to start a requirements analysis.